The vote in the House of Representatives last Friday that effectively stalled President Obama’s push for a big Asia-Pacific trade deal has brought attention to a little-known worker assistance program called Trade Adjustment Assistance. That program’s been around since the 1960s to help Americans who lose their jobs because of global trade.

Under the president’s trade bill, it would have been retooled and extended, but Democrats in the House torpedoed that idea as a way to put the brakes on the larger trade legislation. But far outside the beltway, in the other Washington – Washington state – workers who have benefited from the assistance program say it shouldn’t be allowed to die.

One town that’s felt the brunt of global trade is Aberdeen, Washington.

When you drive into Aberdeen, near the Pacific Coast, you see a welcome sign that says “Come As You Are” – a tribute to Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, who grew up here.

That grunge sound grew out of tough economic times here in the early 1990s, and if you look around Aberdeen today, it seems hard times are still here. There are boarded up storefronts downtown.

Brad Pierog is one of the people who lost his job because of the declining timber industry. On a recent day, he stood out in his yard describing everyone on his block who worked in the mills. Not many do anymore, including him.

On a January day in 2009, he was supposed to work the night shift at the Weyerhaeuser sawmill in Aberdeen. In the afternoon, his buddy called and said, “Want to go fishing tomorrow?”

“And I said, `Well, we got to work tomorrow,’ and he says, `Well, no, we don’t. We got some time off,’ ” Pierog recalled. “And I said, `What, are we laid off or what?’ He said, `Nope, they just pulled the plug. The mill’s done.’ ”

He’d spent 25 years working there. His wife worked there. All his friends worked there.

“We weren’t able to compete with subsidized Canadian lumber,” Pierog says.

That’s not the only reason, but the U.S. Department of Labor agreed that imports were a factor. So Pierog and his coworkers qualified for Trade Adjustment Assistance. It was created in 1962 as a way to acknowledge that there are winners and losers when we trade and to help people who wind up on the losing end.

Pierog went to a meeting with union representatives and state officials to find out what kind of help he could get.

“And I said, 'Since I’ve already got an associate’s degree, can I go get a bachelor’s?’ And they said, `It has to be something you can actually get a job in.’ And I said, `Well, I want to get a bachelor’s in computer science.’ ”

Boom. It was like he said the magic words. They got him into a college within three weeks. And now, six years later, he’s a software developer for the state of Washington.

The person who helps make all that happen in Washington state is Bill Messenger of the Washington State Labor Council. Before this, Messenger spent more than 30 years working in a pulp mill himself and had never heard of Trade Adjustment Assistance until he got word his mill was closing down.

Many people haven’t heard of it, but Trade Adjustment Assistance offers benefits to about 100,000 people a year. Once he lost his pulp mill job, Messenger came to work for the state labor council to help workers apply for this program. He’s almost like a bereavement counselor, showing up at factories right after employees find out they’re losing their jobs.

“Up to 800 people, 900 people — all in one facility — looking at you like, 'What now?' ” Messenger says.

Messenger says he’s helped thousands of workers in Washington state get benefits.

Now that program may be in jeopardy. Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen, who represents a district north of Seattle, is upset about that.

“As a Democrat, I think I would call on my fellow Democratic colleagues to change their minds,” Larsen says.

He supports the fast-track trade bill, but he’s concerned the Republicans have the votes to pass it without the worker-retraining legislation.

“That would be more than unfortunate,” Larsen says. “That would be devastating to folks who are thrown out of work.”

Jeffrey Schott, with the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C., says the program does have critics. Some say companies should provide this assistance — not the government.

“Others feel that the program is justified, but it hasn’t been well constructed, and that the current programs are inefficient,” Schott says.

Schott says in the end, though, it may organized labor — a group that traditionally supports the program — that brings down the president’s trade agenda.

“Big labor unions, for tactical reasons, have basically pulled the rug out from under him,” Schott says.

It’s unclear what’s going to happen next.

What is clear is that if the Trade Adjustment Assistance program doesn’t pass within the trade package, the original program could die. It needs to be reauthorized by the end of September.

Jamie Nash is a screenwriter who lives on the outskirts of Baltimore. And he’s been trying to break into Hollywood. He shopped a couple of scripts around there, got some interest, but no sale. Then, ka-ching. His two comedies got optioned.

Who’s the big movie studio that snapped them up? Amazon.

Amazon Studios is the company’s new movie production arm, and it’s optioned everything from horror movies to kids’ TV shows. Nash says when he tells friends and family the movie house he's working with, they scratch their heads.

“They kind of look at me and they're like,`You mean the book people?’” Nash said.

You know Amazon, the book people, who have laid waste to brick-and-mortar booksellers. And Amazon the retail people, selling everything from diapers to diamonds. But now you've got Amazon in movie production, Amazon in banking, Amazon making tablet computers and running a massive cloud computing system that NASA and Pfizer use. What isn't this company doing?

“Amazon's always been very interested in becoming a utility," says Brian Walker, an analyst with Forrester Research. "A backbone so pervasive in an industry that you can't imagine it not being there, and it may not necessarily operate on a fat margin, but it's everywhere."

Here’s why, says Walker. If Amazon can make a hit TV show, it can lure lots of people to its online streaming and away from Netflix. If it can make loans so merchants sell more stuff through Amazon, the company gets more commissions plus interest on the loans. If it sells tablet computers, it can sell more e-books.

But come on, no company can do everything perfectly. Amazon is tightlipped about how these ventures are doing. Walker says Amazon risks spreading itself too thin.

“For Amazon, it is a concern that they’re getting involved in so many different things, can they really be good at all of it?” Walker said.

Still, Amazon has a pile of cash and even more ambition. So what do you do if you're a business owner and Amazon is coming after your market? Like the world of plumbing supplies.

Outside the warehouse of Pacific Plumbing Supply in Seattle, Larry Solomon points out stacks of industrial pipe he says one of his customers recently bought from Amazonsupply.com. Solomon is chief executive of Pacific Plumbing Supply.

He's long competed with Amazon on small things like garbage disposals or faucets. Now Amazon’s selling big stuff like pipes and water heaters. Solomon thinks it’s going after Home Depot more than a company like his. Still, he can’t afford to ignore the likes of Amazon.

“We're not in any way dismissive of the monster headquartered here in Seattle,” Solomon said.

But here's the thing -- on the one hand, he calls the company a monster. On the other, he shops on Amazon all the time.

“Most recent purchase -- I bought my grandson's Halloween costume,” Solomon said with a laugh. “He wants to be a policeman.”

Can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Lots of companies have complicated relationships with Amazon these days, and some may be about to. UPS ships millions of orders for Amazon. But Forrester analyst Brian Walker says he wouldn’t be surprised to see Amazon start its own shipping business -- it already has a fleet of trucks and logistics expertise.

Bob Moon: When the daily deal site Groupon goes public soon, its founders are likely to become billionaires. And here's why that's causing excitement in Chicago: Local startups are hoping some of that money will trickle back down to them.

In this building, Watermelon Express is like a tiny barnacle stuck to the side of the Groupon battleship. It's an example of how Groupon is trying to help small companies like this one get their legs.

Rangnekar: I would not want to be in any other city but Chicago right now.

Last year, Rangnekar met Groupon's founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. They liked his idea so much, they decided to invest in it and give him office space. Rangnekar was one of 10 local entrepreneurs the Groupon founders backed with their $100 million venture capital fund Lightbank. Groupon's IPO will almost certainly turn Lefkofsky, Keywell and other Groupon executives into billionaires.

And people in Chicago hope they'll plow even more money into local start-ups. That could help Chicago become less of a flyover city when it comes to tech. The Midwest has long trailed Silicon Valley, New York and New England in venture capital deals. Steve Kaplan teaches entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Steve Kaplan: We really haven't had a big winner where the winner has had people who are technology savvy, who want to put money back in. So it's a big deal.

But despite all the excitement, few people expect Chicago to edge out Silicon Valley anytime soon. Bump Technologies makes apps for smartphones and got its start in Chicago. But chief executive David Lieb says the company concluded there weren't enough engineers and software developers here. So they set up headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

David Lieb: For us, you know, we knew we had to hire a bunch of people and being here in the Valley is really where all that technical talent is.

But Chicagoans are hoping Groupon's success will change that and seed the growth of what some here are calling Silicon Prairie.